


Independence Wars

by redletters



Category: West Side Story (1961)
Genre: Character of Color, Family, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Gen, Hispanic Character, Immigrants, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/pseuds/redletters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you had all that here, why would you want to go back to Puerto Rico?"</p><p>"Oh, even if you didn't have all that here, why would you want to go back there?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Independence Wars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Larian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larian/gifts).



  
_i. We no longer want despots, tyranny shall fall now,_   
  
  
_the unconquerable women will also know how to fight;_   
  
  
_We want liberty, and our machetes will give it to us._   
  
_\- La Boriqueña, state anthem of Puerto Rico_

  
Maria was just old enough to understand the Ley de la Mordaza, that law that meant her class at Escuela de Jayuya had to stop singing La Boriqueña every morning, and take down the national flag from their walls, and hang up an American Stars and Stripes and learn the English words to America, The Beautiful. It was the first English Maria heard in person, sung off a music sheet their teacher brought in, and she thought the melody was so pretty she ended up humming it on her way home every day for a week.

It was that week, with its warm otoño weather and clear blue skies, that Maria remembered her mother, coming home from a late meeting with a large food basket. Her father she remembered as harried and exhausted during that time, and, Maria now realised, it must have been from waiting up for her mother every night. Maria had been waiting up too, although her father had sent her to bed hours before, with the promise of sweets from the food basket. She was jealous that 'Nardo got to sit up with the adults — he was only fourteen, and she was ten, and shouldn't she get to eat whatever treats their parents had brought back, too? Maria was sure they must be wonderful, if they were only for grown-ups, and she had just as much right to them as 'Nardo did! 

When all the grown-ups were seated and talking seriously — Maria's mother gesturing firmly, her father shaking his head, 'Nardo looking wide-eyed back and forth between them — Maria crept up behind her mother's chair, tugged the cloth off the top of the food basket, and reached in for a cookie. But her hand brushed cold metal. 

Her father saw her and jumped out of her chair. "Maria Diaz! Stay away from there!" Her mother turned around, and snatched the basket quickly away while her father's face darkened. "This is what I told you would happen, Clara — I have said, again and again, no more meetings with that madwoman! Do you want our children being shot in the streets?" 

"They will be shot in the streets anyway, Alberto," Maria's mother said calmly. Her father didn't speak to her, but picked up Maria and carried her into the next room where the beds were, scolding her for going where she wasn't welcome and for upsetting her mother. He was angrier than Maria had ever known him to be before, his beard shaking and his arms tight around her, so tight it hurt her stomach. Maria buried her face in her father's shoulder and started to wail. Over his shoulder, she saw her mother pick something out of the basket and fold Bernardo's hand over it. She recognised it from films, although she had never seen one in real life: it was a gun. 

__

  
_ii. Always the babies crying/And the bullets flying/I like the island Manhattan._   


Yet Maria liked Blanca Canales, "that madwoman". Her mother's cousin always treated her like an adult, instead of patting her lightly on the head and talking over her. She was around the little house outside Jayuya often in those days, and brought a new dress for Maria on her eighth birthday: a full-skirted party dress in the light blue of the Puerto Rican flag. Maria of course demanded to change into it immediately, and when it was on, ran up to hug Blanca and spin around happily. But her father made her take it off after just a few minutes: "It's too big for you," he said gruffly. "And besides, the color is bad."

So Maria was happy to see her whenever she came, although she always arrived late and left after just one cup of coffee. She was a kind face, if serious, who often helped put Maria to bed during that autumn of 1950 — until one day, just a month after Maria's mother had brought a gun home, Blanca came early. It was a cooler Monday at the end of October, and Maria was getting ready for school when there was a knock on the door and there stood Blanca with a dozen men. Maria was shocked to see they were all carrying big guns — even Blanca, and she was a lady! Blanca spoke low. Maria's mother nodded, and her father shook his head, and 'Nardo was impatient, but in the end, Blanca left without them. 

Maria's mother didn't let her go to school. There were shots in the town centre that day, and Maria's father gripped the arms of his chair. Her mother picked up one of her skirts to take down the hems, but she kept looking out the window; after the third time she pricked her finger and drew blood, she threw the garment on the floor and simply sat on the window sill, straining to look and listen. 

At lunchtime there was sharp loud noise in the distance, and Maria's father shouted "Get away from the windows, all of you!" 

Maria started to cry; she couldn't help herself. Her parents were angry and they were all trapped here and it all must be her fault somehow. 'Nardo held her while she sobbed into his shoulder, and rocked her back and forth. She was tired and cried out when there was a knock on the door. 

Maria's father opened it, standing tense and tall, and Maria's mother, she saw, was holding her sewing scissors very tightly. Both pairs of shoulders relaxed in relief as the door opened wider, and Maria could see two of the young men from that morning, both barely older than 'Nardo, one slumping against the other. His arm hung oddly, like one of Maria's dolls that had been tugged too hard. 

"I'm Raul," said the upright one, speaking quickly. "This is Diego. Blanca said — this would be a good place to come." Maria's father paused, then nodded, and Maria's mother ran to clear her sewing tools off the beds in the next room as the boys wavered into the house. 

"I've got to go back," Raul said. He lay Diego on Maria's bed with one hand — she nearly protested about his getting her blankets bloody, but decided that would not be very polite — and took Diego's rifle with the other, slinging it over his shoulder. He turned to speak to Maria's mother, as if giving a report to a commanding officer. "Senora Diaz. We've shot a police officer - just one, they surrendered right away after that - and are holding the station. There's no telephones out because Blanca's cut them all." He smiled, Blanca's reflected glory in his face. "She's a wonder. She made someone give her a rifle but she hasn't fired a shot — I don't think she knows how to use it," he laughed. "Not that the American police could tell. When she told them to stand down or she'd call down her grandfather's horses to fuck them all — ai!" Clara Diaz laughed too, even though her eyes were wet, and she shook Raul's hands. "Viva la Puerto Rico libre," she said, and the boy soldier saluted and left. Maria's father shook his head, and went to the tall cabinet to rummage for tobacco for his pipe.

"Can someone tell my sister what's happened," Diego said. He spoke slowly, and rasped between words. Maria looked over, and his eyes were closed. "Anita del Carmen. We live—"

"—by the coffee farm, across the little stream. I'll tell her," 'Nardo said. "I know her from school." Maria's mother gave him a sharp look, but Diego hoarsely asked for water, and as she rushed to pour it from the old chipped blue jug by the window, 'Nardo was out the door and gone. Maria watched his gangly 14-year-old form loping across the rocky mountains, and Raul picking a path down toward Jayuya city, where she could just see the tops of the buildings and a haze of smoke rising over them. 

'Nardo didn't come back until twilight, when Diego's fever was running high and Alberto's pipe had burned down to embers. "I've been in town," he said breathlessly, before either of his parents could ask. "They've burned the post office and raised the flag above the police station." Maria's mother clapped her hands, and reflexively looked back to her husband, who huffed and extinguished his pipe. He stood, folded his hands behind his back, and paced the room slowly, looking out the window at the red glow of Jayuya, and turned back to the family.

"We can't live like this," he said. 

"Alberto," Maria's mother said. He didn't look at her. He looked at Bernardo, and then at Maria, and at the boy none of them knew who was lying on the bed breathing harshly and low. 

"Write to your sister. Tell her we're taking her offer."

Clara looked angry. "When?"

"Soon."

 __

  
_iii. The city should give me its key/A committee should be organised to honor me_   


It took three years to sell all their land in Jayuya and buy plane tickets for all of them, and meanwhile Maria and her friends at school talked excitedly of their moves to America. Diego del Carmen had moved there already, after his arm healed and left him with a scar he wore proudly. He had a house in Florida, he wrote, and added that it was almost as beautiful as home. His sister Anita was now a good friend of all the Diazes — although she was a year older than Bernardo, she was in his class at school anyway, having been held back for fighting. She scoffed at her brother's letters and said she wanted to move to New York. "Anybody who's anybody lives there!" she said, and she laid out the magazines to prove it. Maria's aunt lived there, and had a big floor in a tenement house with all her friends, she said. There were lots of jobs there and thousands of Puerto Ricans, you could get all the foods from back home and more. So New York it was.

It was the first time any of the Diazes had been on a plane in their lives, and Maria held her mother's hand almost as tightly as her mother was holding hers. 

'Nardo was flushed with pride and excitement as they boarded. Their aunt had promised him a job at a factory: "many Puerto Ricans work there, it is a good job with lots of opportunity," she wrote. 

"And you know what opportunity means in America," he said. "It's not like at home—" he waved his hand, dismissing the word. Both he and Maria were beginning to speak of "home" as something embarrassing that had happened to them in the past, but now, with the grace of Dios y Santa Maria y President Harry S. Truman, they would overcome. 

"Opportunity means being President," he explained to Maria. "Or...First Lady, I suppose," he said generously. 

"Miss America!" Maria said. She and Rosalia spent hours looking at Anita's magazines. Maria's favorite was the Miss America evening wear pictures: all those beautiful young women in their glamorous gowns, looking like they were going to a Washington ball. When they were in America, they promised each other, they would buy long beautiful evening dresses and wear them out on the town.

 __

  
_iv. "Who jumped A-rab the other day?"  
"Who jumped me the first day I moved here?"  
"Who asked you to move here?"  
"Who asked you?"_   


Maria spent her first five months in America learning English and assuming the Jets were made-up fairytale monsters. The stories Bernardo told her reminded her of her mother's stories of La Llorona, who, Blanca Diaz cautioned, would try to snatch Maria if she left the house without her mother or older brother. 

"Now I am in America, and I still cannot leave the house on my own," Maria grumbled to Anita, but her brother's friend clucked and said, 

"You'll understand soon enough." But Anita, just like 'Nardo, always looked over her head, never directly at her. Rosalia was the only one who met her eyes when she spoke to her, as if she were a  grown-up – and she was! She was almost sixteen! – instead of a toddler. 

Now it was June, and the factory boss had fired all the Puerto Rican workers one day, calling them lazy thieves. 'Nardo, Tito and Pepe had nothing to do but wait for day work to come through, and hung around outside all day — late — and came home with scraped knuckles and bloody noses. But today, 'Nardo had a day's work at the docks, and, even better, Anita was working late at the bridal shop for a big order. She had been complaining about it for weeks: a senator's younger daughter, who wanted "nothing but the latest, don't you know!" and so had waited until the last possible day to settle on a style for her bridesmaids. Although Anita had raged, both at the bride and at Miss Alice for agreeing to push the deadline back, and back, and back — "as if we had nothing better to do than work extra long hours for her!" — the money was good, as it almost never was. 

And it meant Maria was free, able to slip out of the big tenement house (now with many more friends and family on her aunt's floor)  with her saved-up earnings from the bridal shop. She had seen a pair of red shoes just like in Woman's Day's fashion spread in the window of Macy's, and knew she had to have them for her new high school's Fourth of July party. Maria kept her earnings for two months, going without while Rosalia and Consuelo and all her friends sipped ice cream sodas and egg creams and teased her for watching her figure. In truth Maria would rather have had a root beer float than a thin waist – she wanted hips like Anita's, hips that would let her mambo – but she kept the red shoes firmly in mind and held her money tightly. She hid her 50c a week in the bottom of her brassiere drawer and finally, on June 25 1955, had the $8.50 she needed to buy those red shoes.

Maria didn't know where she would wear them after the party – in her bedroom, probably, just in front of the mirror. But 'Nardo had promised her that he would take her to a real dance when she was sixteen, and she needed to be ready.

She turned the corner toward the big Macy's and passed the playground. A boy about 'Nardo's age dangling from a crossbar by one knees, reaching down to almost brush the ground with his fingertips. When he turned around, Maria saw his bright yellow jacket and smiled, thinking the color looked pretty; when he suddenly swung himself up and shouted at her, she jumped almost a foot, then felt stupid. Of course, yellow was Jet color. 'Nardo had told her that two weeks ago.  

Maria tossed her hair and tried to pretend she was a confident American girl. "In your dreams, pig!" she shouted back, trying to keep her voice from wavering. She'd heard Anita say that back to Spanish cat-callers, but it was the first time she had tried it in English.    
The boy jumped back, then began to laugh, a full-throated sound that made Maria like him immediately. She quashed the feeling quickly. This was the enemy, and Anita and 'Nardo had warned her, and she hadn't listened. 

"You don't speak English very well, do you?" He sounded almost friendly, but she knew better than that now. 

"I didn't hear what you said," she said angrily. He held his hands up. 

"Look, I just think you might be lost," he said. "This is not a good neighborhood for people like you, you know? Something could happen."

"I am going to Macy's and I have as much a right to go to Macy's as any one of you!" Maria said. 

Suddenly she saw Chino crossing the street ahead of her and saw what he saw: her, looking flushed and upset, talking with a light-haired gringo on a street corner. Don't do it, she prayed, but Chino put his hand to his mouth and whistled, and Tito popped up as if by magic. The white boy looked around and straightened his back, and Maria stamped her foot — it was all so stupid. "What are you doing, you stupid idiots?" she demanded. Chino looked chastised — he could never stand up to anyone for more than a minute or two, it was no wonder Rosalia liked him — but Tito came up behind the boy and before Maria could do anything they were jumping on each other, dodging acrobatically and grunting with exertion. 

Maria wished she had a bucket of water to throw on them. And now that Chino knew she was out, 'Nardo would know, and she would never hear the end of it, or ever be allowed out of the house again; she would die locked in her room with Anita pushing her food under the door. Maria ran up and grabbed Chino's arm, pulling him away from the fight. "Listen to me!" she said desperately. "You have to promise me you will not tell Bernardo you saw me here." Chino was breathless, and his knuckles were bleeding. "Please. It would be a very big favor you did for me."

Chino's eyes were big and brown, and he was about to say something when Tito whistled at him, a sharp upturned note, and they both scampered off, Chino calling "Rapido, Maria!" over his shoulder as he ran. The gringo pulled himself to his feet and looked at her, angry now, and spat deliberately on the ground while watching her. He stumbled off and Maria could see blood running down his neck. 

She lifted her head and kept walking. It was only four more blocks to Macy's. If 'Nardo and Chino and Tito wanted to bring the Independence War here from back home, sure, that was up to them. It didn't affect Maria. She didn't know why the white boys were so angry at her, and the rest of her family, but maybe they had all come from independence wars too. 

Maria heard sirens behind her but kept walking. She was sure they would pull over next to her and ask if she had seen anything — ask what her brother was up to, ask if she had seen anything suspicious, ask if she knew of anything wrong with the neighborhood — but she had nothing to tell them. She was an American girl walking to Macy's to buy new shoes for the Fourth of July — what could the New York police want with her?

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the Jayuya Revolt actually happened and it was actually led by a woman and was very right-on right up until the end when the US National Guard bombed the town and arrested everyone! Also Google Lolita Lebron, because she is another fab feminist independence leader I found while researching this story. Happy Yuletide and I hope you enjoy!


End file.
